The IaaS product launched today provides users a cloud for running Linux virtual machines on the same infrastructure that powers Google itself

With its Google Compute Engine launched Thursday, Google is offering an IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) cloud for running Linux virtual machines on the same infrastructure that powers Google itself.

Developers can take advantage of the speed and scale of the same infrastructure powering Google applications, Google said. "Many of you have learned to live with erratic performance in the cloud. We have built our systems to offer strong and consistent performance even at massive scale," McLuckie noted in the blog post. Google plans to offer users 50 percent more value for their money than other leading cloud providers.

Users can launch Linux virtual machines on demand, including single-, two-, four- and eight-virtual core VMs, with 3.75 gigabytes of RAM per virtual core. Data can be stored on a local disk, on Google's new persistent block drive device, or on Google's Internet-scale object store, Google Cloud Storage.